


Transient Orca

by egregiousSynonyms



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adultery, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Pacific Northwest, Washington, a beached whale, best plot device, severe literature and art history nerdiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:23:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egregiousSynonyms/pseuds/egregiousSynonyms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Rose go on a vacation like proper grown-ups. The week that they arrive at the small village on the coast of Washington, a dead whale washes up on the beach. It is a far bigger deal than it should be. The whole town, Rose included, stares at the whale like its some blubbery second coming.</p>
<p>Essentially, John and Rose do not have the strongest marriage and stuff happens, because I am a big fan of the trolls throwing at least 8 wrenches into the humans' relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This is a Story About a Whale

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for this from Margaret Atwood's short story "Happy Endings." I think it adds a nice context, so I'll include Part A here.
> 
> John and Mary meet.  
> What happens next?  
> If you want a happy ending, try A.
> 
> A.  
> John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs  
> which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming house. Real estate values go  
> up. Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they have two children, to whom they are  
> devoted. The children turn out well. John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life  
> and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies  
> which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.

It came as a surprise to no one that the beached whale, dead four days, did, in fact, stink. What they did not expect was the extent. Stench rolled off the carcass in waves, shimmering like summer heat. The sea did its best to blanket the scene in salty potpourri, but the brisk wind only served to carry nausea to the edge of the crowd. The sand absorbed the fumes, grew blacker, and loosed a puff of foulness at each impatient shift of weight. One kid, his nose bunched, poked a barnacle and was chastised by the drone of displaced flies. Nearby, the port stood in stark defiance, straight beams and flood lights opposed to pock-marked blubber and swaying tourists. The dock had its own noble odor of fish guts and no time to spare for some sob-story mammal’s corpse.

Spectating a whale’s purification was not what you had expected when your husband had proposed this vacation. When he had spoken of a fishing town on the edge of the world, you had imagined blazing blue seas outlined with nigh-explored coves and forests dense with mystique. You had dreamt of towering, pristine vessels, the wind whipping your hair, the smell of adventure in the air. Perhaps, you think with an immediately regretted sniff, you had been naive.  
There is something magnetizing about the whale, something that has enticed an entire town to stare at a decaying corpse for days on end. You think idly that it has something to do with the removal of public death from contemporary society. No longer does the tribe gather to watch the solstice sacrifices. There is no sage-reeking smoke as the priest holds an ornamented knife to a heaving prisoner-of-war’s throat. No chants fill the lungs of the tribe. There is nothing to cement their unity to their blood-hungry god—or to one another. 

So far, your only intimate experience with death had been arranging for a factory funeral parlor to paint your dead grandmother back to life. The next day, you had attended a service where your mother’s maudlin antics were sedated with instant coffee, stale cookies, and a surreptitious bar of Xanax. The funeral parlor air had been thick with the scent of dying roses in a gross attempt to gild stark bouquet after stark bouquet of lilies. While the leader of the service read a verse from Corinthians in monotone, you had never felt more alone.

You check your watch. Half past two. What is taking John so long? The two of you were supposed to meet up for lunch an hour ago. This morning, he had gone out on a boat captained by his new best friend that he had met at the pier yesterday evening. The extent of your husband’s gregarious nature has ceased to surprise you, and he is equally unsurprised when you decline the invitation to join him on the boat. You both know that you will eventually acquiesce to a double date with the new best friend and his assuredly charming wife and that you will probably have a good time in spite of yourself. For now, though, you choose the whale. It is your alpha, your omega, the runny flesh upon which all of your dreams rest. Where the hell is John?

“Excuse me.”

You are startled out of your brood by a voice to your right. You flinch and turn your head in what must have been a violent fashion because the woman that spoke looks concerned and apologetic. 

“Er, sorry to jolt you like that. I did not mean to disturb you. I just noticed that you had been standing here for a long time and thought I might ask you if you had noticed something that I had noticed.” 

You raise your eyebrows in a way that you hope encourages her to not only keep speaking, but also to get to the point. When she falls silent and looks away, chastened, you realize that your eyebrows are not nearly as expressive as you had previously given them credit for.

“No problem at all,” you say, clearing the lack of use from your throat when it squeaks, “I’ve just been staring at this whale for so long that my brain has started to liquefy.” You smile what you hope is a reassuring smile, “What had you wanted to ask me about?” 

You manage to look the woman in the eyes. They are a lovely shade of green.

“Well,” she begins, “It’s the flies. Have you noticed that they are buzzing about the head in a coordinated manner?” You had not noticed, but as you squint at the black shimmers above the whale’s head, a definite pattern emerges. 

“It’s a gamma.” 

The other woman looks surprised and then her eyes crinkle in delight, “Exactly! I thought I was crazy at first, but the more I stared, the more pronounced it became. The pattern has remained unbroken since I arrived here.”

“It’s like one of those color blotches that used to be in newspapers. The ones where you had to unfocus your eyes and an intricate dragon would impossibly rise from an opaque sea of magenta and cyan.” You are surprised when, instead of being put off by your obtuse metaphor, she smiles and extends her hand. You take it.

“Kanaya.”  
“Rose.”  
“Nice to meet you.”  
“The pleasure is mine.”

A comfortable silence descends as the two of you turn back to the whale. This is the most pleasant interaction that you have had with a stranger since, well, ever. So pleasant, in fact, that you do something wildly out of character.

“Kanaya?”  
“Yes?”  
“Have you eaten lunch yet?”  
“Is it that late already?” 

She checks her watch. The face is small with black roman numerals against a gold background. The black leather band is faded and creased with age. You enjoy that she wears a watch instead of relying on a cell phone.

“My, it is already three. No, I suppose I have not.”  
“Well, my husband was supposed to meet me here two hours ago, so he has either forgone the verbal contract we made this morning, or he is lost at sea and I am a newly woeful widow. Either way, I’m hungry and companionless. Would you like to discuss the Idealistic implications of knowledge of the Greek alphabet in flies over something to eat?”

She opens her mouth, closes it, stares at you with those green eyes the shade of which you have determined to be jade with spines of amber radiating from the pupil like the Sun’s corona during a total eclipse, and your newfound confidence shifts to anxiety in the span of a nanosecond. Oh God, you are stupid. You don’t even know this woman, why would you want to try and make small talk with a stranger for any extended period of time, when you get back to your hotel room you are going to do the world and yourself a service and sew your mouth shut before—

“I would love to. Did you have anywhere in mind?”  
Oh. Good. She’s smiling again. It’s a nice smile. Soft, without teeth, you’d go so far as to dub it elegant. The shrill voice in the back of your head quails in the face of that smile.


	2. Can You Write Fan-Fiction About a Painting?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so far for all the encouraging kudos/ comments/ bookmarks/ views!
> 
> This is where it gets nerdy. Also, Karkat.
> 
> For reference:  
>  _The Venus of Urbino_ by Titian: http://test.classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/374/flashcards/389374/jpg/titian-venus-of-urbino-1538-730385.jpg  
>  _Olympia_ by Édouard Manet: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/manet/olympia/olympia.jpg

Kanaya leads you along the rocky shore in what she assures you is “the scenic route.” The two of you chatter about books. You tell her of your summer project that hopes to knit On the Road, Lolita, and The Grapes of Wrath into a cohesive narrative of the American experience. She says that she hopes that one day pretentious twenty-somethings will be suitably disgusted to see Humbert Humbert’s tender soul equated to that of their beloved Salvatore.

The restaurant is little more than an open-faced shack between the road and the shore. It appears to be constructed from driftwood, hopes, and dreams. The flat tin roof is painted a dark green. The quaint building against the black rocks and sea is something your stepbrother would take a picture of with a sepia filter, and something your mother would send on a postcard. You prefer to enjoy your visuals untainted with the pressure of manufacturing memories.

“It’s lovely,” you say.  
“Thank you. It is my aunt and uncle’s restaurant.”

Upon closer inspection, you realize that the driftwood is only an effect. Someone had painted intricate patterns to evoke the look and texture of seaweed-draped driftwood freshly washed ashore. 

“It took me a whole summer.” Kanaya runs her fingers over the wood like it’s satin.  
“Hm?”  
“The paintjob. My aunt just wanted a simple navy blue, but I treated it like my magnum opus.” She chuckles. “It was my first long-term painting project.”  
“I’m impressed. The detail is phenomenal. So this is a family enterprise?”  
“My aunt runs the business, and my uncle brings in the catch for the restaurant and to sell in town. My cousins fill in the gaps where they are needed. I worked in-shop all through high school and spent the summers on the boat when I was not obsessively touching up the exterior. My sister helps with the administration, and I think my aunt may be grooming her to take over if they decide to open a second location.”  
“Do you still work here?”  
“Oh no. I have been away for the last several years attending college. I moved back home from Seattle last fall.”  
“My husband grew up in Seattle. His father still lives there. I like the greyness of it; it’s a natural melancholy instead of plain smog. It’s what every prospective Metropolis should strive for: a sense of ennui that doesn’t cause lung cancer.”  
Kanaya laughs. “That is by far the most convincing marketing push for Seattle that I have ever heard.”  
“Tell that to the city. I’m sure they pay better than Oberlin.”

The lunch is pleasant. You talk about how relieved you were to finish your doctorate, how your first year of teaching at an actual college went, and how utterly sick you are of your colleagues claiming that Walt Whitman is the pinnacle of 19th century American poetry. Kanaya keeps up with you rant and offers her own insights into the use of dashes among Poe’s stories and Dickinson’s poetry. You have to admit that you are impressed, and that you grin a bit too genuinely at the flawless grill lines on your halibut.  
She tells you about her dual degree in studio art and art history and her overwhelming desire to paint like Titian. You feel incredibly silly when her sensuous description of flesh in _The Venus of Urbino_ brings heat to your cheeks. Her hands flit about like insects, and her voice speeds up enough to use contractions when she relates her re-envisioned _Olympia_ :  
“She’s looking over her shoulder at the viewer, just glaring and bored and so unimpressed. And her black curls just cascade over her olive skin that’s pulled way-too-tight over her way-too-skinny body. Oh, and she’s Persian! And she’s basically an odalisque except for that being-white mythological crap. The other woman is a plump Turkish slave woman with a shaved head, and the whole room is littered with Abbasid-era detritus and you would not believe how difficult it is to paint a proper hookah...”

She gets a bit shy when you ask about hobbies, and she tells you that she designs and alters her own clothes. You find yourself staring at her outfit. She wears a fitted, lemon-yellow jacket over a cream tank top. You sneak a glance under the table to see tight, waist-high black trousers that end at delicately crossed ankles and black ballet flats.  
You feel inadequate in your old black windbreaker, light jeans, and hiking boots. You hadn’t been aware that staring at a dying whale would have a dress code. Again, you suppose that you had been naive. 

“What are you flighty broads talking about over here?”  
The waiter, who you were introduced to as Kanaya’s younger cousin Karkat, grabs one of the chairs at the table, flips it backwards, and plops down. He has changed from a white dress shirt and black pants into a cream-colored wool sweater and jeans.

“I assume that your shift has ended. Is ‘flighty broad’ supposed to be an actual insult, or is it another one of your poorly-concealed terms of endearment?”  
“What exactly is a ‘flighty broad’?” You add.  
“I assume it has some sorts of avian characteristics-”  
“While wearing a flapper dress and hanging on a gangster’s arm-”  
“Would a gangster ever call his ladyfriend a ‘broad’?”  
“I believe the term used to be strictly derogatory and imply loose morals. Would Daisy Buchanan be considered a ‘broad’?”  
“Daisy was certainly the flightiest of the broads.”

Karkat jumps from his seat, hands in the air.  
“Oh my God, shut up! Sorry I asked!”  
He sits back down with a scowl.  
“You guys have been sitting here for like ten hours, all leaning in close, and Kan’s doing that flappy hand thing that she does when she gets excited.”  
“I do no such thing.”  
“Yes, you do.”

Kanaya looks to you for support, and you shrug. “I have observed a certain style of gesticulating that became more pronounced when you spoke about your art.”

Karkat rolls his amber eyes, the same shade as the spines around Kanaya’s pupils. 

“Oh Christ, was she talking about her naked lady BFA thing?”  
“Please do not refer to my primary thesis piece as my ‘naked lady BFA thing.’”  
“Whatever. So what, are you one of Kan’s pretentious art school friends?”  
“No,” you say. When Karkat looks at you expectantly, you add, “We met this morning. At the whale.”  
“Oh my God, the fucking whale. When are they going to clean that shit up? I can smell it from here and let me tell you it is fucking nauseating. I am going to sue the town for what I’ve been paying for Pepto Bismal. Goddammit, that is no small sum!”

Kanaya places a hand on his shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Darling, you are yelling.”

Karkat harrumphs and clutches the chair’s back until his knuckles turn white. His tone turns serious. 

“That fucking whale is everything that is wrong with this shitty town. You were gone, and I don’t know why you didn’t stay gone. You’re a moth to the world’s wettest, greyest flame, Kanaya.” 

The stare he fixes on Kanaya is too long and too intense to be anything but wildly uncomfortable. Kanaya peers at you and then her knees. Karkat shakes his head. “Fuck it. I’m going home and taking a hot bath. You two have a nice fucking evening.” 

He stands up, wrenches the chair around, pushes it in properly, and stalks into the kitchen with all the aplomb of a systematically kicked puppy. You smirk out of pure nervousness. Your shoulders twitch under the weight of Karkat’s words, made sodden and heavy with generations of context that you could not even begin to parse.

“You will have to forgive Karkat. He is... excitable. We assumed he would grow out of the public displays of aggressive angst, but he is turning twenty this year and, well.”  
“There’s still time. I was still something of a terror at twenty. Nearly drank and cried myself to death.”

Her smile falters, and you think that you see a flash of concern in her eyes. Perhaps you shouldn’t reveal upsetting personal details to people that you just met; perhaps that would fall under the heading of “socially unacceptable.” 

“Sorry. I forget that other people don’t find that as funny as I do. That was nearly eight years ago, I’m perfectly stable now.” You rest your chin on your upturned palm and smile sweetly at Kanaya. She smiles back. You could get used to that.

“Have you heard from your husband yet?”

You frown. You make a show of taking out your phone and checking, though you are aware that you have received neither message nor call. You shrug.

“Oh. Well. Did you have anything planned for today?”  
“Hmm. I had some vague ideas for exploration. I’ve been led to believe that there is some sort of vegetation about the place that is popularly held to be pleasing to the eye.”

You make a vague gesture towards a verdant peninsula visible through the open front of the restaurant. The two of you lapse into silence. It is uncomfortable, so you pick at the cuticle on your left index finger until it bleeds. Kanaya is the first to break.

“My plans for the day thus-far have been woefully staring at an empty canvas and hoping that it will magically compose itself into brilliance. And it seems that your plans have been on the receiving end of a wrench. And it has been something of the serendipitous that we have met and spent time together. Perhaps, if you would not mind company, you might want to continue our acquaintance? I know of a few lovely spots about town. I could act as your guide.”

She makes eye contact, smile nervous and fingers picking at her left sleeve. You bite back your delight.

“That sounds wonderful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanon diverges on whether Rose is a psych major or a lit major for undergrad. I hold that she started with psychology, hated the program and her fellow psych majors, and switched over to English where she could over-analyze everything to her heart's content. 
> 
>  
> 
> Hehe, anyway, thanks for reading so far, and I hope I'm doing a good job. As always, comments/ critiques are welcome!


	3. Isn't This a Story About a Whale?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best part about writing fanfic for Homestuck is that the kids are 13 and that I can make them into whatever type of adults I deem best. It also means that I can invent amusing historical vignettes without having to actually world-build.
> 
> TW: The Whale comes back and it is disgusting. There are maggots. I'm not sorry.
> 
> Lastly, OH HELL FORMATTING IS CONFUSING _i hate it_

You are in awe. You have no suitable words to describe the beauty cascading before you. “Jeweled,” “majestic,” and even “sublime” seem infuriatingly passé in the face of this splendor. You mean, it’s a waterfall; that is what it is. It is the goddamn Platonic ideal of a waterfall. You grew up on top of a waterfall. You’ve been to Niagara Falls countless times. While Niagara Falls has size, it lacks the framing foliage. It lacks streams and the cacophony of birds. Most importantly, it lacks a personal tour guide that identifies every single flower that you narrowly avoid mashing into the dirt.

Kanaya is crouching by a stream picking a handful of what she calls “beauty berries.” They are small violet berries that grow in grape-like clumps between thin, serrated leaves. Before hitting the wilderness, the two of you had stopped by Kanaya’s so that she could change into something more suitable. She wore a red and black plaid flannel that looked enticingly soft over a form-fitting white thermal tucked into a pair of dark denim skinny jeans. On top of that, she managed to make hiking boots look stylish and you are duly impressed.

Kanaya rises and holds out a hand full of berries, grinning like that time when you were six and presented your mother with a sculpture of an octopus composed from the bones of a fish that you had coaxed from the pond and promptly eviscerated. You had wanted to prove that you understood the concept of evolution and that it was not “too difficult for your little girl brain to really get, you know, Rosie?” Upon receiving the sculpture, your mother had stopped whatever she had been doing and had drawn you a phylogenic tree on the kitchen counter in pink permanent marker with labels of _Bacteria_ , _Archaea_ , and _Eukaryota_ in her loopy handwriting. Three hours later, all of horizontal surfaces in the kitchen were covered in pink branches and you had a strong understanding of the differences in evolutionary history between the phylums Chordata and Moluska. Your mother had your statue cast as a bronze and to this day displays it in the center of the drawing room mantle.

You take a few berries and pop them into your mouth. You must pull a face, because Kanaya is stifling a giggle.  
“I should have warned you. Most find their taste to be acerbic if eaten straight from the bush. I think that they are delicious.”  
She eats a handful, and you smack your lips in thinly-veiled disgust.  
“They make a pleasing jam. It has a much milder flavor that most find inoffensive and even refreshing. I knew I should have brought a basket for collection.”

Mumbling what you assume to be more self-admonishing about her lack of basket-themed foresight, Kanaya reaches down and plucks a few marble-sized clusters of violet flowers from a crevice in a rock. She twists one of the twine-like stems around the others to make a loose arrangement. She straightens out and you are stunned when she steps close to you and tucks the bloom behind your ear. Deft fingers arrange your chin-length blonde hair around the flowers, and you force back a shudder. She steps back, taps two fingers on her chin, and surveys her handiwork.

“It matches your eyes. I do not often find purple sea thrift that is not being choked out by a cloying cloud of pink.”  
“Alliteration becomes you,” you manage to spit out, gingerly caressing the flowers with your fingertips. You hope that perhaps all that heat in your cheeks is manifesting itself in something other than an ignominious blush.

She giggles at your half-baked praise, and your stomach leaps into your throat. You are twenty-seven years old, for Christ’s sake, and this woman is dragging your senses kicking and screaming all the way back into adolescence. This woman that you met today. This woman with whom blooms a highly-promising friendship. This woman who is most assuredly not your husband, and whose incidental touches should not inspire violent chemical reactions just below your skin.

You spend the rest of the hike adamantly enjoying nature. Kanaya leads you by the hand into a sun-dappled ravine filled with a mixture of lamb’s-ear and blanket flowers the color of sunsets. She picks one of the silvery-green leaves and rubs it against her cheek, smiling a private smile that you pretend not to notice. All of this nature sure is jeweled and majestic.

By the time you emerge from the forest, the sun has set. In yet another fumbling attempt at continuing your acquaintance, you offer to buy her a drink to repay her for the sublime tour-guiding. She insists that it was entirely her pleasure but agrees to accompany you to a local bar regardless.

The route to the bar leads you past the whale. Several spotlights had been set up and fixed on the carcass. The flies are uncharacteristically quiet. Kanaya comments on this and you both approach the whale. You crane your neck towards the head and recoil with a hand clapped to your mouth. The skin drooped over the eyes is quivering, and as your eyes focus, you see that the whale is covered in millions of flies milling about in a caricature of convection.

“Perhaps... Perhaps Karkat’s misgivings about the whale were not entirely ungrounded.”

You nod, lean forward, and snap a picture of a bed of maggots pooled in an eye socket. Kanaya is disquieted, but she indulges your photo-shoot. After you get over your initial revulsion, you find the scene simply too macabre not to document. You also know of some choice relatives who would be receiving framed 24X36 photographs labeled _Entropy_ this Christmas.

By the time that the two of you arrive at the bar, drinks have moved from timid social lubricant to psychological necessity. Kanaya brooks no argument when you order two whiskey sours for the first round. They are quickly emptied, and you order two more. And then two more.

The conversation shifts predictably to college shenanigans. You talk about how you participated in rush week each year, and how you had fabricated a new identity each time. Life was all forced smiles and short story fodder until several of the Tri Delts had caught on and had you ignobly escorted from the Rush Party Bus your junior year. When your mother had caught word of the scandal, she had sent you her most earnest praise about how you were finally getting involved in the collegiate community. You still receive at least three pieces of sorority paraphernalia a year. Though you would never admit it to you mother, you frequently sleep in a certain over-sized orange hoodie emblazoned with Chi Omega in pink plaid.

Kanaya looks mildly disgusted and orders another round.

“While I earnestly hope that I never come into contact with that sweatshirt, I am a bit jealous of your abundance of comfortable, Greek-themed clothing.”

You snort and immediately cover your mouth. Kanaya responds with a giggle and her own story of getting wildly intoxicated on the last night of her semester abroad in Venice:

“I had met this lovely Italian girl, and she fed me the cheapest grappa we could find. It had the most pleasant nuance of," she pauses, as if a gourmand savoring a fine wine, "nail polish remover. Anyway, we managed to break into the Frari, which is a lovely basilica that has Titian’s _Assumption_ above the high altar, and his body presumably not too far under it. Well, I suppose we did not “break in” so much as hide in the ladies room after midnight mass and make-out. When we became tired of waiting, we emerged and explored. It was brilliant and so massive and silent and dark. Somehow, no one caught us, even when we, uh, well,”

You raise your eyebrows and, throwing back your drink, give them a waggle. Kanaya blushes, further saturating the liquor-pink of her cheeks.  
“Go on. You can tell me in which part of the church you fucked your Italian girl.” You lean across the booth conspiratorially. “Was it the high altar?”  
She nods, and you loose a peal of hysterical laughter before you can stop yourself.  
“And beneath the _Pesaro Madonna_.”

You almost fall out of your chair.

You and Kanaya throw back two more rounds, and the whiskey is making your head swim in the most delightful way. And Kanaya is so precious as she babbles about the bar’s cherry wood varnishing and how exquisite gold leaf would look with the faux whale-oil lamps hanging from the ceiling.

You check your phone. It is half past one in the morning. You still have not heard from your husband, and you wonder if he is, indeed, lost at sea. You think that it is more likely that you and he are in similar positions, i.e. drinking yourselves senseless with someone you barely know. You wonder if his thoughts are turning as wicked as yours.  
It is by some lackluster serendipity that your phone vibrates just as you return it to your pocket. It does not stop vibrating for nearly a minute. This text dump is from your stepbrother:

hey rose hows bumfuck nowhere washington   
just talked to john and dude sounds like hes havin a blast on some ship with some chick   
and this chick obvs cant be you cause youre like diametrically opposed to anything that isnt reading about a shit some dead white dude took one time  
and im not the kinda guy to sell out his resident palhoncho   
like the president calls all are you bad enough to take your best bro to vegas for a sicknasty bachelor party and get him punched out by mike tyson and mauled by a rogue stripper   
and im like fuck yeah i got this   
but sometimes when a man and woman love each other very much a third party and notably infinitely manlier man has to come in and punch that first man in the balls   
feel free to chime in any time   


You look up from the sea of red texts. Dave’s messages show up on your phone as red thanks to some voodoo that you have yet to become bored enough to decipher. Kanaya is engaged in some sort of highly subtle communication with the bartender. You assume that like every other pair of human beings in this town, they have a long and varied history. They are flapping quite amiably, and you deem it safe to take a moment to answer your brother’s conniption fit.

just trying to talk to my baby sister   
ask her how shes doing   
see if shes drowned and chillin with poseidon   
tell her not to eat the pomegranate seeds cause its a fuckin trap   
That was Persephone, and you know it.    
bonafide akbar   
wow way to interrupt this thoughtful convo ive been having with myself   
rude   
My sincerest apologies. I’m glad to hear that you’ve been talking to John. We were supposed to meet for lunch over twelve hours ago, and I had not heard anything from him, albeit secondhand, until now.    
oh shit well hes on a boat   
(motherfucker)   
with some woman   
You already said the woman part. Are you implying that John is actively engaging in lascivious activities on a boat, of which I should take a good, hard look? Do you infer that I should be suspicious? That after taking a vacation to pristine town, my husband has found passion in the arms of a rugged sea mistress? That my life has inexplicably morphed into the Harlequin title of the month? All because John is spending time on a fishing boat during a fishing trip with a fisher-woman that is not me?    
rose   
Are you receiving a play-by-play of his infidelity?    
no   
Has John been anything but faithful to me these last five years?   
yes   
i mean no but   
Has he, in fact, fucked a mermaid?   
jesus shut the fuck up i think hes doing blow again   
Oh hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, Rose, compensating much? Originally, I wasn't planning on doing other POV's, but that's going out the window and next chapter we're going to get a peek at everyone's favorite derp who is getting sucked into my favorite headcannon. It is that Vriska Serket does cocaine. Because, seriously, I cannot imagine a world where cocaine is a thing and Vriska does not put all of it up her nose.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second homestuck fic and my first attempt at multiple chapters. I have most of it already written, so I'll probably update once a week or so. Also, the rating will rise when I post the inevitable smut. So that's something to look forward to. I appreciate any and all comments/ critiques.


End file.
